Judging by the number of pageviews my last post got, it seems that people really like reading about Disney princesses. Regrettably, there's nary a princess in any of these movies, and two of them don't even feature significant female characters at all. Welcome to the AFI, folks.
This movie bored me. I'm sorry. I hate that word, "boring," because it's a critique that never really goes anywhere productive. But boredom was the overriding feeling I got while watching The Best Years of Our Lives. The cinematography is flat, much of the acting feels phoned-in, and the plot lacks a clear structure and compelling stories. It's not for lack of trying on the plot's part, though, as I gather (from the largely didactic and tiresome score that plays throughout most of the film) that the movie at least intends to make me feel very deep emotions throughout. And it seems to have managed to swell those emotions in other people, given its placement on this list and the fact that it pretty much swept the Academy Awards back in '46. Heck, Roger Ebert even liked it. It just didn't click for me, though. Part of me wonders if this is just one of those "you just had to be there" movies (though, unless he's a time traveler, Roger Ebert wasn't "there" either). There's no question that the concept of soldiers returning home after WWII was a lot more immediate in 1946 than it is today. Its thematic territory might have felt a little fresher back in the '40s, too; by 2014, we've had dozens of movies, documentaries, TV shows, and books, chronicling the challenges soldiers face when trying to reenter domestic life after being in combat, and conditions like PTSD and some of the other emotional and psychological trauma experienced by those men and women have reached a decent level of mainstream awareness. Looking back almost seven decades to The Best Years of Our Lives, I can't help but find the whole thing a little uninspired and uncompelling, not because of the subject matter (that will always be important) but because of the relatively trite way in which it engages that subject matter. This movie seems content to say, "Yeah, it's hard for soldiers to return home after war," and leave it at that, whereas so many other movies since then have dug deeply into the specific whys and hows of the soldiers' difficulties. It isn't all bad; the early sequence depicting the soldiers' first night back with their families is engaging, and there's some spectacular framing of shots in the final wedding scene. But overall, The Best Years of Our Lives was not the best three hours of my life (ha. ha.. ha... *rimshot*).
I don't have a whole lot to say about this movie except that it's a ton of fun. It's funny that my write-up of the last John Huston-directed movie on this list (The Maltese Falcon) spent so much time trying to parse out if the movie had a moral or not, because in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, there is most definitely a moral: don't be greedy. And that's a fine moral and all, but it has absolutely no bearing on why I like this movie so much. Whereas The Maltese Falcon sometimes feels like it's trying its hand at profundity (hence making the moral, or lack thereof, kind of important), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is pretty much cool with just being the most entertaining, thrilling picture it can be. Whether or not it has a moral "point" isn't all that important. And as far as entertaining and thrilling pictures go, this one works like gangbusters. It's one of the great adventure movies of all time, and Humphrey Bogart gives a fantastic turn as the film's villain. It also has one of the more useful of famous movie quotes in the "We don't need no stinkin' badges" line. Really, you can use that quote anywhere. Observe: We don't need no stinkin' barges. We don't need no stinkin' vegetables. We don't need no stinkin' bicycles. We don't need no stinkin' Transformers sequels. We don't need no stinkin' long write-ups of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Wish granted.
I like Dr. Strangelove a whole lot. It's a wonderful mix of the dry and absurd flavors that I usually prefer my comedies to come in, and it's also the rare comedy that is beautifully shot, which should surprise nobody once the Stanley Kubrick name flashes on the screen. The screenplay is tight and fun and greatly accessible for the kind of brainy comedy that this is; even as a kid, I loved the "precious bodily fluids" bits and some of the more slapsticky moments, even though most the sociopolitical satire flew way over my head. It's a movie filled with so many instances of comedic ridiculousness of such a wide range of types that I imagine most people will find at least one joke that lands for them. There are the big "you can't fight in here, it's the war room" moments that are of course huge laughs, but my favorite jokes come at the film's margins, those little details of uncommented-on silliness, like the way the flight commander dons an enormous cowboy hat when he gets word to drop the bomb. Great stuff. And yet... I can't help but wonder if, like The Best Years of Our Lives, I haven't missed the boat on this movie. Don't get me wrong; it's great. But how much greater must it have been back when the Cold War was actually happening? How much more would the fear of a real-life nuclear apocalypse have galvanized the humor? How much sharper must the satire have been when it was picking apart versions of actual possibilities? How much more bite must that final montage of nuclear blasts have had? With the world no longer a sneeze away from H-bomb oblivion, Dr. Strangelove must have lost a little of the terrifying edge that it once had. It's no longer a movie speaking directly to our society. Sure, there are plenty of ways that this movie's themes are still in conversation with contemporary culture (heck, the world is still a violent place rules by raging military powers), but you have to generalize the film a bit to make that work, forming metaphors and fables out of things that were once quite literal. That's the thing about great satire, I guess; there's always the chance that it'll become slightly obsolete.
That's all for now, folks! Thanks so much for reading. It's always great hearing from y'all, so if you have any insights or grievances or humorous anecdotes or whatever, feel free to share. Until next time, be sure to protect your precious fluids from the dirty Reds.
If you feel so moved, you're welcome to go back to the previous post, #s 34-36, here.
Update: Also, you can go on to the next post, #s 40-42, here.
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